Globalization, comprehensive term for the
emergence of a global society in which economic, political, environmental,
and cultural events in one part of the world quickly come to have
significance for people in other parts of the world. Globalization is the
result of advances in communication, transportation, and information
technologies. It describes the growing economic, political, technological,
and cultural linkages that connect individuals, communities, businesses,
and governments around the world. Globalization also involves the growth
of multinational corporations (businesses that have operations or
investments in many countries) and transnational corporations
(businesses that see themselves functioning in a global marketplace). The
international institutions that oversee world trade and finance play an
increasingly important role in this era of globalization.

Although most people continue to live as
citizens of a single nation, they are culturally, materially, and
psychologically engaged with the lives of people in other countries as
never before. Distant events often have an immediate and significant
impact, blurring the boundaries of our personal worlds. Items common to
our everyday lives—such as the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the
cars we drive—are the products of globalization.

Globalization has both negative and positive
aspects. Among the negative aspects are the rapid spread of diseases,
illicit drugs, crime, terrorism, and uncontrolled migration. Among
globalization’s benefits are a sharing of basic knowledge, technology,
investments, resources, and ethical values.

The most dramatic evidence of globalization
is the increase in trade and the movement of capital (stocks,
bonds, currencies, and other investments). From 1950 to 2001 the volume of
world exports rose by 20 times. By 2001 world trade amounted to a quarter
of all the goods and services produced in the world. As for capital, in
the early 1970s only $10 billion to $20 billion in national currencies
were exchanged daily. By the early part of the 21st century more than $1.5
trillion worth of yen, euros, dollars, and other currencies were traded
daily to support the expanded levels of trade and investment. Large
volumes of currency trades were also made as investors speculated on
whether the value of particular currencies might go up or down.

REASONS FOR GLOBALIZATION

Most experts attribute globalization to
improvements in communication, transportation, and information
technologies. For example, not only currencies, but also stocks, bonds,
and other financial assets can be traded around the clock and around the
world due to innovations in communication and information processing. A
three-minute telephone call from New York City to London in 1930 cost more
than $300 (in year 2000 prices), making instant communication very
expensive. Today the cost is insignificant.

Advances in communication and information technologies have
helped slash the cost of processing business orders by well over 90
percent. Using a computer to do banking on the Internet, for example,
costs the banking industry pennies per transaction instead of dollars by
traditional methods. Over the last third of the 20th century the real cost
of computer processing power fell by 35 percent on average each year. Vast
amounts of information can be processed, shared, and stored on a disk or a
computer chip, and the cost is continually declining. People can be almost
anywhere and remain in instant communication with their employers,
customers, or families 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or 24/7 as it has
come to be known. When people in the United States call
a helpline or make an airline reservation, they may be connected to
someone in Mumbai (Bombay),
India,
who has been trained to speak English with an American accent. Other
English speakers around the world prepare tax returns for U.S. companies,
evaluate insurance claims, and attempt to collect overdue bills by
telephone from thousands of kilometers and a number of time zones away.

Advances in communications instantly unite
people around the globe. For example, communications satellites allow
global television broadcasts to bring news of faraway events, such as wars
and national disasters as well as sports and other forms of entertainment.
The Internet, the cell phone, and the fax machine permit instantaneous
communication. The World Wide Web and computers that store vast amounts of
data allow instant access to information exceeding that of any library.

Improvements in transportation are also part
of globalization. The world becomes smaller due to next-day delivery by
jet airplane. Even slow, oceangoing vessels have streamlined
transportation and lowered costs due to innovations such as containerized
shipping.

Advances in transportation have allowed U.S. corporations
to subcontract manufacturing to foreign factories. For example, in the
early 2000s the Guadalajara,
Mexico,
factory of Flextronic International made pocket computers, Web-connected
TVs, computer printers, and even high-tech blood-glucose monitors, for a
variety of U.S. firms.
Low transportation costs enabled Flextronic to ship these products around
the world, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made the
Mexico location
more attractive to Flextronic.

Advances in information technologies have
also lowered business costs. The global corporation Cisco Systems, for
example, is one of the world’s largest companies as measured by its stock
market value. Yet Cisco owns only three factories to make the equipment
used to help maintain the Internet. Cisco subcontracts the rest of its
work to other companies around the world. Information platforms, such as
the World Wide Web, enable Cisco’s subcontractors to bid for business on
Cisco’s Web site where auctions take place and where suppliers and
customers stay in constant contact.

The lowering of costs that has enabled U.S. companies
to locate abroad has also made it easier for foreign producers to locate
in the United States.
Two-thirds of the automobiles sold in North America by
Japan’s
Toyota Motor Company are built in North America,
many in Kentucky and
in seven other states. Michelin, the French corporate giant, produces
tires in South Carolina where
the German car company BMW also manufactures cars for the North American
market.

Not only do goods, money, and information
move great distances quickly, but also more people are moving great
distances as well. Migration, both legal and illegal, is a major feature
of this era of globalization. Remittances (money sent home by
workers to their home countries) have become an important source of income
for many countries. In the case of El Salvador, for example, remittances
are equal to 13 percent of the country’s total national income—a more
significant source of income than foreign aid, investment, or tourism.

THE INSTITUTIONS OF GLOBALIZATION

Three key institutions helped shape the current era of
globalization: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and
the World Trade Organization (WTO). All three institutions trace their
origins to the end of World War II (1939-1945) when the United States and
the United Kingdom decided
to set up new institutions and rules for the global economy. At the
Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire in
1944, they and other countries created the IMF to help stabilize currency
markets. They also established what was then called the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to help finance the rebuilding
of Europe after
the war.

World Bank

Following Europe’s postwar
recovery the IBRD became known as the World Bank. Its mission was
redirected to help developing countries grow faster and provide a higher
living standard for their people. The World Bank made loans to developing
countries for dams and other electrical-generating plants, harbor
facilities, and other large projects. These projects were intended to
lower costs for private businesses and to attract investors. Beginning in
1968 the World Bank focused on low-cost loans for health, education, and
other basic needs of the world’s poor.

International Monetary Fund

The IMF makes loans so that countries can maintain the
value of their currencies and repay foreign debt. Countries accumulate
foreign debt when they buy more from the rest of the world than they sell
abroad. They then need to borrow money to pay the difference, which is
known as balancing their payments. After banks and other institutions will
no longer lend them money, they turn to the IMF to help them balance their
payments position with the rest of the world. The IMF initially focused on
Europe,
but by the 1970s it changed its focus to the less-developed economies. By
the early 1980s a large number of developing countries were having trouble
financing their foreign debts. In 1982 the IMF had to offer more loans to
Mexico,
which was then still a developing country, and other Latin American
nations just so they could pay off their original debts.

The IMF and the World Bank usually impose certain
conditions for loans and require what are called structural adjustment
programs from borrowers. These programs amount to detailed instructions on
what countries have to do to bring their economies under control. The
programs are based on a strategy called neoliberalism, also known as the
Washington Consensus because both the IMF and the World Bank are
headquartered in Washington,
D.C. The
strategy is geared toward promoting free markets, including
privatization (the selling off of government enterprises);
deregulation (removing rules that restrict companies); and tradeliberalization (opening local markets to foreign goods by removing
barriers to exports and imports). Finally, the strategy also calls for
shrinking the role of government, reducing taxes, and cutting back on
publicly provided services.

World Trade Organization

Another key institution shaping globalization is the World
Trade Organization (WTO), which traces its origins to a 1948 United
Nations (UN) conference in Havana,
Cuba.
The conference called for the creation of an International Trade
Organization to lower tariffs (taxes on imported goods) and to
encourage trade. Although the administration of President Harry S. Truman
was instrumental in negotiating this agreement, the U.S. Congress
considered it a violation of American sovereignty and refused to ratify
it. In its absence another agreement, known as the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), emerged as the forum for a series of
negotiations on lowering tariffs. The last of these negotiating sessions,
known as the Uruguay Round, established the WTO, which began operating in
1995. Since its creation, the WTO has increased the scope of trading
agreements. Such agreements no longer involve only the trade of
manufactured products. Today agreements involve services, investments, and
the protection of intellectual property rights, such as patents and
copyrights. The United States receives
over half of its international income from patents and royalties for use
of copyrighted material.

CRITICISMS DIRECTED AT THE IMF AND WTO

Many economists believed that lifting trade barriers and
increasing the free movement of capital across borders would narrow the
sharp income differences between rich and poor countries. This has
generally not happened. Poverty rates have decreased in the two most
heavily populated countries in the world, India and
China.
However, excluding these two countries, poverty and inequality have
increased in less-developed and so-called transitional (formerly
Communist) countries. For low- and middle-income countries the rate of
growth in the decades of globalization from 1980 to 2000 amounted to less
than half what it was during the previous two decades from 1960 to 1980.
Although this association of slow economic development and the global
implementation of neoliberal economic policies is not necessarily strict
evidence of cause and effect, it contributes to the dissatisfaction of
those who had hoped globalization would deliver more growth. A slowdown in
progress on indicators of social well-being, such as life expectancy,
infant and child mortality, and literacy, also has lowered expectations
about the benefits of globalization.

IMF Terms and Conditions

The IMF, in particular, has been criticized
for the loan conditions it has imposed on developing countries. Economist
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist at the
World Bank, has attacked the IMF for policies that he says often make the
fund’s clients worse, not better, off. So-called IMF riots have followed
the imposition of conditions such as raising the fare on public
transportation and ending subsidies for basic food items. Some countries
have also objected to the privatization of electricity and water supplies
because the private companies taking over these functions often charge
higher prices even though they may provide better service than government
monopolies. The IMF says there is no alternative to such harsh medicine.

The WTO has faced much criticism as well.
This criticism is often directed at the rich countries in the WTO, which
possess the greatest bargaining power. Critics say the rich countries have
negotiated trade agreements at the expense of the poor countries.

The Final Act of the Uruguay Round that
established the WTO proclaimed the principle of “special and different
treatment.” Behind this principle was the idea that developing countries
should be held to more lenient standards when it came to making difficult
economic changes so that they could move to free trade more slowly and
thereby minimize the costs involved. In practice, however, the developing
countries have not enjoyed “special and different treatment.” In fact, in
the areas of agriculture and the textile and clothing industries where the
poorer countries often had a comparative advantage, the developing
countries were subjected to higher rather than lower tariffs to protect
domestic industries in the developed countries. For example, the 48
least-developed countries in the world faced tariffs on their agricultural
exports that were on average 20 percent higher than those faced by the
rest of the world on their agricultural exports to industrialized
countries. This discrepancy increased to 30 percent higher on
manufacturing exports from developing countries.

Agricultural Subsidies

The agricultural subsidies granted by wealthy countries to
their own farmers have earned the strongest and most sustained criticisms,
especially from developing countries. Japan,
for example, imposes a 490 percent tariff on foreign rice imports to
protect its own rice farmers. The average cow in Switzerland earns
the annual equivalent of more than $1,500 in subsidies each year as the
Swiss government seeks to protect its dairy industry from foreign
competition.

The United States enjoys
some of the greatest advantages. Because of government payments, U.S. farmers
can sell their products at 20 percent below their cost of production in
overseas markets. United States corn
exports represent more than 70 percent of the total world exports of corn.
The United States ships
half of the world’s total exports of soybeans and a quarter of all wheat
exports. Farmers in the United States can
sell these grains at half of what it costs to produce them. The resulting
artificially low world prices hurt producers in poorer countries where
there are no government subsidies.

For example, in 2002 the president of the United States authorized
$4 billion in subsidies to America’s
25,000 cotton farmers. This action lowered world cotton prices by
one-fourth. As a result West African countries lost hundreds of millions
of dollars, and the region’s 11 million cotton-producing households
suffered increased poverty.

The European Union (EU) gives its farmers even higher
subsidies. The EU is the world’s largest exporter of skimmed-milk powder,
which it sells at about half the cost of production. The EU is the world’s
largest exporter of refined sugar, which it sells at a quarter of the cost
of producing it. Governments in the developed world pay more than $300
billion a year in farm subsidies, seven times what they give in
development aid. Such subsidies have a devastating impact on farmers in
poorer countries. Mexican farmers are priced out of local markets for corn
by subsidized U.S. exports.
Sugar growers in Swaziland and
cotton producers in West Africa must
compete with products that rich countries dump onto the world market at
prices well below the cost of their production due to these subsidies.

Foreign Aid

Foreign aid from rich countries does little to offset the
impact of these subsidized farm exports. Foreign-aid spending by wealthy
nations amounts to only a tiny percentage of their incomes and total
government spending. The United States gives
just 0.1 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), or about $35 a year
per American, in foreign aid. Of this, about one-third goes to just three
countries—Israel,
Egypt,
and Pakistan—which
together receive more than twice as much aid from the United States as
the poorest billion people in the world do. Europe gives
0.33 percent of its collective GDP and has promised to increase giving to
0.39 percent. Although the United States and
Japan,
the world’s two largest economies, give the most aid in absolute terms,
they are at the bottom of the list of countries based on aid as a share of
national income. The most generous are the smaller countries of Northern Europe,
including Denmark,
Norway,
The Netherlands, Luxembourg,
and Sweden.

Trade Disputes, Rules, and Agreements

Given the importance of foreign trade, one
of the most important international agencies is the WTO’s Dispute
Settlement Board, which is empowered to settle trade disputes under WTO
rules. Winners of such settlement decisions by the board are allowed to
retaliate against countries found guilty of unfair trade practices.
Smaller, developing countries, however, fear cross-retaliation if they
confront larger, more powerful nations.

Critics of the WTO in developing countries
charge that the rules do not help them and that they have been forced to
bear the harsh adjustment costs to free trade while developed countries
have not lived up to their liberalization commitments. According to these
critics, the terms of trade have gone against the developing countries.
The value of developing countries’ exports has declined relative to the
value of their imports. Not only have the prices of such commodities as
coffee, copper, sugar, and cotton fallen substantially for decades but
also earnings from labor-intensive manufacturing, such as textiles and
clothing, have declined as an ever greater number of developing countries
compete for the limited amount they can export to the rich countries. At
the same time the developing countries have faced increased prices on
goods they import, ranging from computer software to airplanes to
medicine.

A WTO meeting in November 2001 in Doha,
the capital of Qatar,
set in motion a multiyear negotiating process aimed at further
liberalizing world trade but with a focus on the needs of the developing
countries. However, disputes over agricultural subsidies, the definition
of intellectual property rights, and whether poor countries were to be
entitled to “special and different treatment” were not easy to resolve.
The rich countries had the greater bargaining power, and their trade
negotiators were under pressure not to make concessions that would hurt
people back home.

In 2003 these issues came to a head as WTO talks in Cancún,
Mexico,
foundered. Representatives of a group of 21 developing countries withdrew
from the talks after the EU and the United States failed
to meet their demands for lowering agricultural subsidies. The same
countries also resented EU and U.S. proposals
that they accept new rules for foreign investment without first agreeing
on the issue of subsidies. Some observers believed that the failure of the
talks in Cancún made it unlikely that global trade rules could be
negotiated by a self-imposed deadline of January 2005.

Critics of the WTO have also charged that
the developed countries have obtained a set of trade agreements benefiting
their large corporations. The Agreement on Basic Telecommunications, for
example, opened world markets to large telecommunications companies based
in the developed nations. These companies were previously excluded from
these markets by government-owned monopolies. The Financial Services
Agreement likewise opened opportunities for banks, insurance companies,
and stockbrokers in the developed countries as they sought to expand into
new markets.

Instead of increasing economic stability,
financial liberalization caused financial crises in most of the world’s
economies. An IMF study found that 133 of the fund’s 181 member countries
suffered at least one significant banking crisis from 1980 to 1995. The
World Bank identified more than 100 major bank collapses in 90 developing
or formerly Communist nations from the late 1970s to 1994. Many economists
believe that these crises were caused by the IMF-imposed financial
liberalization on countries that either lacked regulatory agencies or the
experience necessary to oversee the financial sector.

THE DEBATE OVER GLOBALIZATION

Very few people, groups, or governments
oppose globalization in its entirety. Instead, critics of globalization
believe aspects of the way globalization operates should be changed. The
debate over globalization is about what the best rules are for governing
the global economy so that its advantages can grow while its problems can
be solved.

On one side of this debate are those who
stress the benefits of removing barriers to international trade and
investment, allowing capital to be allocated more efficiently and giving
consumers greater freedom of choice. With free-market globalization,
investment funds can move unimpeded from where they are plentiful (the
rich countries) to where they are most needed (the developing countries).
Consumers can benefit from cheaper products because reduced tariffs make
goods produced at low cost from faraway places cheaper to buy. Producers
of goods gain by selling to a wider market. More competition keeps sellers
on their toes and allows ideas and new technology to spread and benefit
others.

On the other side of the debate are critics who see
neoliberal policies as producing greater poverty, inequality, social
conflict, cultural destruction, and environmental damage. They say that
the most developed nations—the United States,
Germany,
and Japan—succeeded
not because of free trade but because of protectionism and subsidies. They
argue that the more recently successful economies of South Korea,
Taiwan,
and China all
had strong state-led development strategies that did not follow
neoliberalism. These critics think that government encouragement of
“infant industries”—that is, industries that are just beginning to
develop—enables a country to become internationally competitive.

Furthermore, those who criticize the Washington Consensus
suggest that the inflow and outflow of money from speculative investors
must be limited to prevent bubbles. These bubbles are characterized
by the rapid inflow of foreign funds that bid up domestic stock markets
and property values. When the economy cannot sustain such expectations,
the bubbles burst as investors panic and pull their money out of the
country. These bubbles have happened repeatedly as liberalization has
allowed speculation of this sort to get out of hand, such as in Indonesia,
Malaysia,
and Thailand in
1997 and since then in Argentina,
Russia,
and Turkey.
According to critics, a strong active government is needed to assure
stability and economic development.

Protests by what is called the
antiglobalization movement are seldom directed against globalization
itself but rather against abuses that harm the rights of workers and the
environment. The question raised by nongovernmental organizations and
protesters at WTO and IMF gatherings is whether globalization will result
in a rise of living standards or a race to the bottom as competition takes
the form of lowering living standards and undermining environmental
regulation. One of the key problems of the 21st century will be
determining to what extent markets should be regulated to promote fair
competition, honest dealings, and fair distribution of public goods on a
global scale. See also Development Economics.

REGULATING GLOBALIZATION

The debate over globalization focuses in
particular on how it can be regulated to address growing income and wealth
inequalities, labor rights, health and environmental problems, and issues
regarding cultural diversity and national sovereignty.

Inequality

By the late 1990s the 20 percent of the
world’s people living in the highest-income countries had 86 percent of
the world’s income; the bottom 20 percent had only 1 percent of the
world’s income. An estimated 1.3 billion people, or about one-sixth of the
world’s population, have incomes of less than a dollar a day. Inequality
is growing worse, rather than better. More than 80 countries had lower
per capita income (income per person) at the end of the 1990s than
they had at the end of the 1980s. In 1960 the top 20 percent had 30 times
the income of the poorest 20 percent. This grew to 32 times in 1970, 45
times in 1980, and 60 times in 1990. By the end of the 20th century the
top 20 percent received 75 times the income of the bottom 20 percent. The
income gap is even apparent in cyberspace. The top fifth in income make up
93 percent of the world’s Internet users and the poorest fifth only 0.2
percent.

These inequalities in living standards and participation in
the global economy are a serious political problem in an era of
globalization. Some countries have been unable to function at even a
minimum standard of basic competence in the globalized economy. The only
profitable economic activity in some of these countries is linked to
criminal behavior, such as the trade in illegal drugs, smuggling, and
extortion of various kinds. Governments that are helpless to stop such
activity or to collect taxes to meet basic public service needs are
characterized as failed states. Sometimes failed states can become havens
for terrorists and foreign criminals who use them as bases for activities
harmful to other governments and their people. These states may also
provide safe haven for mercenary forces that conduct raids into
neighboring countries. In parts of Africa,
for example, where diamonds and other valuable resources attract criminal
despots, mercenary armies have been engaged in mass killing to terrorize
local populations into giving them what they want. The international arms
trade and easy importation of weapons, which allows such behavior, is a
serious problem.

Labor Rights

To stimulate economic development many developing countries
have established free-trade zones where investors are given special
benefits, such as low or no taxes, and labor unions are discouraged or not
allowed. These benefits have led to violations of human rights. For
example, the Workers Rights Consortium, supported by many colleges and
universities in the United States,
has sent inspection teams to developing countries to investigate the
conditions under which caps and sweatshirts are made for university sports
teams. The consortium found violations of child labor laws, intimidation
of workers seeking to have their grievances addressed, and sexual
harassment. Because only 1 percent of the projected growth in the world’s
labor force is expected to be in the high-income countries in coming
decades, what happens to the world’s lower-income workers in the
developing countries takes on added importance. It may well determine
whether there will be an overall rise in living standards as productivity
gains are widely shared or an overall decline if developing countries
compete for jobs by holding down wages and allowing harsher working
conditions to attract investment and job creation.

The UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO)
has tried to level the playing field by endorsing five widely accepted
core labor standards. These are elaborated in the ILO’s 1998 Declaration
of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. The first promises freedom
of association and states that workers should be able to join together and
form organizations of their own choosing. The second is the right of
workers’ organizations, including trade unions, to bargain collectively
with employers and governments. Third is the elimination of all forms of
coerced or compulsory labor. Fourth is the effective abolition of child
labor. The ILO’s Minimum Age Convention sets a basic minimum age of 15,
but if a country is less developed or if only light work is involved the
minimum age can be lower. If hazardous work is involved, the minimum age
is 18. The fifth provision is the elimination of discrimination in
employment based on race, sex, religion, political opinion, or national or
social origin.

Because the ILO has no enforcement powers,
it has proven difficult to achieve these goals. In some countries
governments pledge to observe the ILO’s standards but then ignore them.
Where child labor laws are enforced, government factory inspectors often
simply demand that child workers be fired. Many observers believe that to
successfully attack the evils of child labor, child workers should not
merely be fired but should be placed in schools and families should be
compensated for the loss of income that occurs when children are removed
from factories.

Health Issues

Life-threatening diseases represent another facet of
globalization. Improvements in transportation that helped usher in
globalization also made it possible for infectious diseases to spread
rapidly around the globe. In 2003, for example, a deadly form of pneumonia
known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) originated in China and
quickly posed a worldwide health threat as airline passengers infected
with the virus spread the illness.

The best way to address these health issues often conflicts
with the WTO’s stand on intellectual property rights, in particular the
patent laws that protect medicines made by pharmaceutical companies. This
issue is particularly prominent in relation to acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome (AIDS). Of the 20 million people who have died of AIDS most lived
in poorer countries. In some developing countries the infection rate is
above 30 or even 40 percent of the adult population. Today the worst
affected countries are in Africa.
The disease is also spreading rapidly in countries such as India,
China,
and Indonesia.

There are other killer diseases found mostly
in poorer countries. Although tuberculosis (TB) affects a small percentage
of the population in rich countries, more than one-third of the world’s
population was infected with tuberculosis in 2000. There are 8 million new
cases of TB and 2 million deaths a year from this disease, and these
numbers are climbing. More than 1.5 million people die each year from
malaria, another disease that mainly impacts developing countries.
Diseases spread by unclean drinking water and tainted food kill nearly 2
million people a year, mostly infants and small children and mostly among
the 1.5 billion people in the world who do not have access to clean water.

In the case of diseases that primarily
affect poor people, little or no research is being done to provide new
medicines because the people affected are too poor to buy them. A major
struggle has emerged regarding AIDS treatment over whether patent laws
will continue to require that people pay high prices for life-saving drugs
or whether lower-cost generic medicines can be provided. This issue has
been intensively discussed as part of the debate over the WTO’s Agreement
on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). Western
pharmaceutical companies that do the research and development wish to
protect their investments and argue that without such protection less will
be spent to develop new life-saving drugs. The developing countries argue
that scientific breakthroughs should be shared as widely and as
inexpensively as possible. They have resisted the extension of property
rights.

Environmental Issues

At least since the discovery of the ozone hole above Antarctica in
the early 1980s, there has been growing awareness that air pollutants can
cross borders and affect everyone living on the planet. The UN’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of the world’s leading
climate scientists, for example, predicts that by the year 2100 the
temperature of the planet could rise by as much as 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius
degrees (2.5 to 10.4 Fahrenheit degrees). This global warming is due to
the burning of fossil fuels, which occurs mainly in the developed,
industrialized world, and the destruction of rain forests, which occurs
mainly in the developing world. Already Greenland’s
ice sheet has thinned and Argentina’s
South Patagonia ice
fields have retreated substantially. Glaciers are melting, and weather
patterns may already be changing.

If global warming continues, experts expect deserts to
advance, particularly across West Africa,
and sea level to rise, flooding coastal areas and submerging a number of
Pacific Ocean island
states. One-third of the world’s most populous countries would be flooded
by even a small rise in sea level. While developed countries such as The
Netherlands can cope, developing countries such as Bangladesh cannot
afford to pay for the kind of dike system that currently protects The
Netherlands. Because of such dire forecasts, 160 nations in 1997 agreed to
the first-ever binding pact to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide and
other so-called greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Known
as the Kyōto Protocol, the pact represented a modest step in limiting and
rolling back harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists argue broadly in favor of
sustainable development. By this they mean a pattern of living that favors
the preservation of habitat, the conservation of nonrenewable resources,
and the increased use of renewable energy sources so that Earth’s
ecosystems are not harmed beyond repair. Environmentalists favor the
principle that polluters should pay for the right to pollute. Concerning
genetic engineering, most environmentalists argue for a precautionary
principle that emphasizes careful study before new genetically engineered
plants or animals are introduced into ecosystems. Genetically modified
plants, according to this principle, should not be introduced unless it is
clear that no damage will be done. Some politicians and agribusiness
corporations believe such a conservative approach would slow growth
unnecessarily, lower living standards, and result in greater costs for
businesses and consumers. They favor rules based on proven danger and far
quicker introduction of genetically engineered products and processes.

CULTURE

There is widespread disagreement over what,
if any, regulation is appropriate in the realm of culture. Some people
fear a loss of cultural diversity as U.S. media companies become dominant.
Such companies tend to “bundle” their products so that a blockbuster movie
is promoted by selling soundtracks, books, video games, and other
products. These cultural wares are distributed worldwide, and along with
reruns of U.S. television shows, tend to replace local alternatives. The
question is whether responses by other nations, such as prohibitions
against the English language and government subsidies of national cultural
productions, are legitimate restraints of trade or represent an unfair
trade practice.

National Sovereignty

In a world that seems to grow increasingly
smaller many issues must be considered at a global level and not only at a
local or national level. However, at what point does this threaten
national sovereignty—that is, the ability of a country to be
self-governing? Some environmentalists, for example, have argued that
environmental laws in the United States can be undermined if the laws are
found to violate NAFTA. In effect, they say, the United States has lost
the right to make and enforce its own environmental policies.

GLOBALIZATION IN THE COMING DECADES

Globalization raises other questions that
will be central to the 21st century. What is the proper role for the IMF,
WTO, and UN, and how should they be governed? What is the best way to
finance development? How much autonomy should countries have when the
economic, political, and environmental decisions they make can have global
repercussions? To what extent should global institutions be able to
constrain what countries can and cannot do in an increasingly globalized
world? What is the right way to balance social and cultural values with
the need for economic efficiency? As the 21st century progresses, more and
more decisions regarding these and other issues will need to be debated.

This is fact and reality, there is nothing
concocted fabricated invented originated, devised or improvised. Sani Bala
shehu wrote in from civil liberties organization (C.L.O).And can be reach
at: